How to check if a mail server is flagged as SPAM by GMail?

Question

I am using POSTFIX for sending mails. The mails that are sent from my mail server - mydomain.com are marked as SPAM in GMail. In other E-mail services like Yahoo and RediffMail, the mails are received in the Inbox folder.

The SPF record is v=spf1 ip4:5x.6x.7x.8x ~all

The DKIM is

DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;d=customnme.mydomain.com; s=mail; t=1469439662;bh=ox+NQjMd0N/RPAYLG5ZMS6WQnHCFcWQQorJHgFWEy0s=;h=From:To:Subject:Date:From;b=xrwOY34hTlIVVKxVxzGUpE+Z4TpQJhD+Zyw8YaU18hJgZmcbdWL49kGSpmf8qLPQrNgl6c796THzjozx3N1pi41H09LCnvsrFC9bHtIOzuESIIPtNF5Uz6iRgkNa092tjc2ezsLS2epa3Ckt87yQNlnGbabszD+i/ZWRRhM5Onw=

This is the DMARC

v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailtp:[email protected]

The SOA record is

mydomain.com. SOA IN 604800 dnsserver1.mydomain.com 1720 1201 7000 2419200 86400

I hope all these records are correct. And my mail server is not a blacklisted one. I checked it with this site, http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx#. The reverse DNS is also working correctly.

The SPAM mail shows this message, It is similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters

I googled about this and got to know that the issue is with the mail content. But the same mail content sent from my another mail server is received in Inbox correctly.

The following is the E-mail header in GMail,

Delivered-To: [email protected]
Received: by 10.194.87.233 with SMTP id bb9csp422958wjb;
        Wed, 12 Oct 2016 01:09:21 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.98.71.215 with SMTP id p84mr3325711pfi.59.1476259760980;
        Wed, 12 Oct 2016 01:09:20 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from mydomain.com (mydomain.com. [5x.6x.7x.8x])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id g6si8043712pfc.188.2016.10.12.01.09.20
        for <[email protected]>
        (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);
        Wed, 12 Oct 2016 01:09:20 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 5x.6x.7x.8x as permitted sender) client-ip=5x.6x.7x.8x;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
       dkim=pass [email protected];
       spf=pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 5x.6x.7x.8x as permitted sender) [email protected];
       dmarc=pass (p=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=test.mydomain.com
Received: from ip-1x-6x-6x-1x.ec2.internal (ec2-5x-2x-2x-2x.compute-1.amazonaws.com [5x.2x.2x.2x]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: support_test) by mydomain.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id D6FCA62853 for <[email protected]>; Wed, 12 Oct 2016 08:09:19 +0000 (UTC)
Authentication-Results: dnsserver1.mydomain.com; dmarc=none header.from=test.mydomain.com
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=test.mydomain.com; s=mail; t=1476259760; bh=KBZ/3urE8FjgB2zmx6SQKeJVnsy7kLKwZTpleUeh8ps=; h=From:To:Subject:Date:From; b=YoroACSjWATce13HYo21DK+KFMAz8I1NAdUtdbCGdKSEgrSH28Ak6QDqBMoaC9G8C
     zc6xveY/WS7wm1GSW+QakyKtIMCmuuL7gVmiPygcqiBGOFd79nY0aARowNs1aZ7two
     uMY/O8Vmj8rbUZKB4de7kVnioCkka5MwImP01gVI=
From: support_test <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Mail Subject
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Custom Mailer
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2016 08:09:19 +0000 (UTC)

I think there is no issue with the server configuration. I doubt if my mail server has been flagged as spam by GMail.

I have already posted this problem in google forum. But dint receive proper response. And I would like to know if my mail server is marked as spam by GMail. Is there any way to check this?

Solution 1

Go to http://postmaster.google.com/ and sign up there, this is recommended by Google https://support.google.com/mail/answer/188131 for blocked emails.

Google provides you there with your individual scoring of your IP and domain.

Verifying your domain also has the side-effect, that you get a higher scoring on your emails.

Also make sure not to send very short (one word) test emails or random strings (like the often used "uname -a | mail ..."), as those are being scored badly.

Solution 2

Google has it's own filtering system, they don't use public blacklists. It's really hard to tell if you have any configuration issues with the most important data commented out.

Your SPF is fine, it passes, I agree it should be -all but that's not the issue you're facing.

From what I can tell you're using AmazonAWS - Which from my experience I always had delivery issues with them and had to stop using them. But this was a couple years back, not sure if anything has changed.

Your best bet to figure this out, without posting the real headers will be to run it through an email tester.

If you don't see any configuration issues, then it's most likely the reputation of the amazon AWS IP blocks, causing the issue with gmail. You can do inbox testing to gain a little more insight into the problem and where else there might be transactional delivery issues.

Comments

[JFL]

an SPF record should not use ~all but rather -all.

[Deepika Masilamani]

My other mail server also uses ~all. But mails from that server is received in Inbox. So I thought, this wont be a problem.

[Deepika Masilamani]

Should it be -all to avoid marking the emails as SPAM?

[Deepika Masilamani]

Thanks for your explanation. Will update the record and let you know the result.

[Deepika Masilamani]

@JFL Should I include both primary and secondary mail servers' IP in SPF?

[JFL]

The spf must include all servers that are used to send email for you domain. If you use the same servers for sending and receiving emails, and you have a MX record for all of them a spf like "v=spf1 mx -all" is enough.

[Paul]

The SPF record should include all servers authorized to send mail for the domain. Also see How to send emails and avoid them being classified as spam?

[Alex G]

Have you figured this out? I'm dealing with the same issue without any possible solutions..

[Deepika Masilamani]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I checked in the email tester. In the summary, it showed 1 Warning and 27 Criticals. But, I could neither view the full report nor use the inbox tester as I am not a PRO member :( Are there any other free tools to check the same?

[Deepika Masilamani]

And May I know a way to check the reputation of my amazon AWS IP? Shall I use mxtoolbox or other similar sites for that? Or is it a completely different one?

[Deepika Masilamani]

I also doubt that the mails from my mail server could have been marked as SPAM by some GMail users. In this case, GMail would label the mails from my mail server as SPAM, right? If this is my problem, how can this be solved?

[Henry]

Unfortunately, nothing else compares to their test and without seeing your real headers, it's hard to offer any suggestions.

[Deepika Masilamani]

Do you want to know the domain/IP of my mail server or anything else from the header? If u need the IP, then I cant disclose it :(

[Henry]

I can't be sure, you'll have to test you set up on a different IP not owned by AWS and see if you get better results. It can be something with the configuration. It's hard to say without seeing the information you can't disclose.

[Deepika Masilamani]

Thanks for your help! I've configured the Postmaster tool for my mail server. And more than 100 mails have been sent from my mail server. But it shows No data to display at this time. Please come back later.